Sang Eun Woo

Pathways to happiness: From personality to social networks and perceived support

Abstract The present study attempts to incorporate individual personality into a social network account of subjective wellbeing (SWB) by proposing and testing a path model in which social relationships (egocentric social networks and perceived social support, PSS) mediate the relationship between personality and SWB. We found that network characteristics (including network size, emotional closeness, and proportion of new contacts) are related to SWB largely via the mediation of PSS. Additionally, network size and proportion of new contacts function as important mediating mechanisms linking extraversion, agreeableness and openness to PSS and SWB.

Openness to Experience: Its Lower Level Structure, Measurement, and Cross-Cultural Equivalence

Openness to Experience is an important but relatively poorly understood personality construct. Advances in openness research require further construct clarification as well as establishment of a common framework for conceptualizing and measuring the lower level structure of the construct. In this article, we present data from 3 studies to address this research need. In Study 1, we identify 6 facets of Openness to Experience—intellectual efficiency, ingenuity, curiosity, aesthetics, tolerance, and depth—based on a factor analysis of 36 existing Openness-related scales. In Study 2, we present further validity evidence for the 6-facet structure based on a newly developed measure of Openness. Data from this study also suggest the presence of 2 intermediate-level factors (i.e., aspects) of Openness: intellect and culture. In Study 3, we present a short form of the newly developed measure, retaining items that showed the highest internal consistency and measurement invariance across 3 samples: U.S. undergraduates, Chinese MBA students, and Chinese undergraduates. Together these 3 studies offer a more nuanced understanding of the multifaceted nature of the Openness construct.

Untangling the Networking Phenomenon A Dynamic Psychological Perspective on How and Why People Network

Compared to the extensive research that has investigated the structures of social relationships (i.e., social networks), relatively little research attention has been geared towards understanding how and why individuals initiate, build, and maintain social networks (i.e., networking) from a psychological perspective. The objective of this review is to shed light on the dynamic, psychological processes at the center of individuals’ discretionary, professional relationship development. The diffuse networking literature in the field of management is reviewed and organized into four primary research streams. On the basis of insights from this review, we propose a dynamic, psychological model of how and why individuals strategically network, which marries social exchange and expectancy theories with the concept of relational schema to explain the networking phenomenon across dyadic and intraindividual levels. This conceptual model posits that a networking interaction, construed as an exchange of resources within a given network relationship at a certain stage of relationship maturity, affects the relational schemas of those involved in the interaction and that each networking partner’s relational schema influences each partner’s perceptions of his or her network relationship and guides individual decisions to network with a specific network contact. The aim of this review is to lay a theoretical foundation for investigating strategic networking from a dynamic, psychological perspective.

A Conceptual and Methodological Framework for Psychometric Isomorphism Validation of Multilevel Construct Measures

The conceptual and methodological framework for measurement equivalence procedures has been well established and widely used. Although multilevel theories and methods have been widely used in organizational research, there is no comparable framework for measurement equivalence of multilevel constructs, or psychometric isomorphism. In this article, we present a conceptual and methodological framework for understanding and testing various forms of isomorphism. Within this framework, we explicate (a) the different types of psychometric isomorphism, (b) the conditions where psychometric isomorphism is appropriate and necessary, (c) how psychometric isomorphism corresponds with different composition models and estimation methods, and (d) the analytic procedures that can be used. Using simulated data, we also illustrate how the proposed procedures may be applied via two analytic methods—item response theory and factor analysis. We conclude with a discussion of theoretical and methodological implications provided by the proposed framework of psychometric isomorphism.

CAPTION-ing the situation:: A lexically-derived taxonomy of psychological situation characteristics.

In comparison with personality taxonomic research, there has been much less advancement toward establishing an integrative taxonomy of psychological situation characteristics (similar to personality characteristics for persons). One of the main concerns has been the limited content coverage of the characteristics being used. To address this issue, we present a collection of 4 lexically based studies using the largest-to-date number of situation characteristics to identify the major dimensions of the psychological situation. These studies each implemented a unique sampling and analytic methodology—namely, a qualitative dimensional exploration; the factor analyses of 2, independent samples of large-scale in situ ratings of situations; and the use of lexical-vector representations from neural-network-based models derived from millions of sources of natural-language usage with a total of 146.7 billion words. Across these studies, a clear 7-dimensional structure emerged: Complexity, Adversity, Positive Valence, Typicality, Importance, Humor, and Negative Valence—collectively referred to as the “CAPTION” model, which parsimoniously integrates the diversity of dimensions found in the extant literature. We then introduce both full- and short-form measures of these CAPTION. Data from 2 additional diverse samples of native English speakers suggest that the measures have good psychometric properties, and are able to predict a broad range of important psychological outcomes (e.g., behaviors, affect, motivation, and need satisfaction), even when pitted against extant situation taxonomic frameworks. We conclude by discussing how the CAPTION framework may serve as a useful tool for conceptualizing and measuring a broad range of psychological situations across all areas of psychology.

Validity of six openness facets in predicting work behaviors: a meta-analysis.

To illustrate the importance of facet-level investigations in predicting organizational outcomes and the need for more primary studies on this topic, we conducted a meta-analysis that took an exploratory look at differential relationships among 7 organizational criteria and Openness traits varying in breadth. Nine Openness predictors—the global dimension, 2 aspects (intellect and culture), and 6 facets (intellectual efficiency, ingenuity, curiosity, aesthetics, tolerance, and depth)—were examined in relations with various organizational criteria such as traditional performance outcomes (task performance, contextual performance, counterproductive work behavior), turnover, leadership effectiveness, training performance, and adaptive performance. Our results support the idea that Openness facets could exhibit differential validity for many organizational outcomes.

Who withdraws? Psychological individual differences and employee withdrawal behaviors

Psychological individual differences, such as personality, affectivity, and general mental ability, have been shown to predict numerous work-related behaviors. Although there is substantial research demonstrating relationships between psychological individual differences and withdrawal behaviors (i.e., lateness, absenteeism, and turnover), there is no integrative framework providing scholars and practitioners a guide for conceptualizing how, why, and under what circumstances we observe such relationships. In this integrative conceptual review we: (a) utilize the Cognitive-Affective Processing System framework (Mischel & Shoda, 1995) to provide an overarching theoretical basis for how psychological individual differences affect withdrawal behaviors; (b) create a theoretical model of the situated person that summarizes the existing empirical literature examining the effect of psychological differences on withdrawal behavior; and (c) identify future research opportunities based on our review and integrative framework.

Understanding and Improving Cross-Cultural Decision Making in Design and Use of Digital Media: A Research Agenda

In the global economy, design of digital media often involves teams of individuals from a variety of cultures who must function together. Similarly, products must be designed and marketed taking specific cultural characteristics into account. Much is known about decision processes, culture and cognition, design of products and interfaces for human interaction with machines, and organizational processes, but this knowledge is dispersed across several disciplines and research areas. This article reviews current work in these areas and proposes a research agenda for fostering increased understanding of the ways in which cultural differences influence decision making and action in design and use of digital media.

A Bayesian Primer for the Organizational Sciences The “Two Sources” and an Introduction to BugsXLA

When first learning Bayesian statistics, the organizational scholar may be confronted by a number of conceptual and practical challenges. The present article seeks to minimize these by first explicating how the Bayesian process can be understood simply as the combination of two complementary sources of information: prior beliefs and data. In turn, we describe how each source is derived from Bayes’s theorem and mathematically formalized, essential knowledge for the Bayesian analyst. However, the beginner can also be undermined by practical difficulties such as software implementation. To this end, we offer a walkthrough of how a Bayesian logistic regression model is coded within BugsXLA, a user-friendly Excel add-in for Bayesian estimation. The data for this example come from a previously published study that identified a subpopulation of “job hobos,” individuals characterized by their frequent voluntary turnover and positive attitudes toward quitting. In the original frequentist analysis, exploring the predictors of hoboism proved to be inefficient and inconclusive. We contrast this standard approach with Bayesian estimation, whose results provide rich and novel insights on the topic.

Developing and Validating Short Form Protean and Boundaryless Career Attitudes Scales

The Protean and Boundaryless Career Attitudes scales developed by Briscoe and colleagues have facilitated research on career attitudes and mindsets, but they are unnecessarily lengthy and somewhat redundant in their content. To address these concerns, this article presents three studies that develop and validate short forms of the Protean and Boundaryless Career Attitudes scales (i.e., PCA-SF and BCA-SF). Study findings suggest that the PCA-SF and BCA-SF provide a more efficient assessment of the protean and boundaryless career attitudes constructs than the full-length measures and exhibit partial measurement equivalence across U.S. and Korean populations.